Tag Archives: warning system

When a natural or manmade disaster strikes, countries in Latin America, Europe and Israel use eVigilo’s multichannel system to warn citizens.

When Lior Shalev, CEO of eVigilo, arrived at his office in Netanya on Tuesday last week, he checked into the back office of his company’s emergency mass-notification system to ensure that it was working smoothly in Chile. A few hours earlier, a major earthquake of magnitude 7.1 had struck the South American country and rocked the capital of Santiago.

eVigilo (evigilo is Latin for “be alert”) makes a geo-targeted system that enables officials to send out mass alerts simultaneously to computers, mobile phones, radio, sirens, social networks and television within seconds – even if all regular networks are busy.

For Chileans, a warning system like this is crucial for saving lives in the event of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

Shalev tells how in 2010, Chile suffered a massive earthquake of magnitude 8.8 and a tsunami aftershock that claimed the lives of 560 people. Four years later, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake hit the Chilean shore but this time, thanks to eVigilo’s system, the death toll was just five people.

“Everyone got a warning but you can’t force people to leave,” Shalev says of the five fatalities.

The eVigilo system proved itself in Chile again in 2015, when the Calbuco volcano erupted twice after being dormant for 42 years.

Working with Chile’s emergency authority, ONEMI, eVigilo sent alerts to warn citizens and tourists to evacuate. The Chilean government said the early evacuation facilitated the work of the emergency forces in saving lives and reduced exposure to ash and gas released during these eruptions.

When the South American country was again hit with an earthquake on April 25 this year, the Chilean government was prepared and no major damage was recorded.

Chile, Israel and the world

Lior Shalev, CEO of eVigilo. Photo: courtesy

In addition to its Chile field experience, eVigilo has worked with the Israel Defense Forces from its inception in 2008. This means the technology has gone through the most rigorous tests possible under extreme conditions.

Shalev, a colonel in the reserves with more than 25 years of military experience in various command positions in field units, is acutely aware of the need for an emergency mass-notification system.

“There are many threats around the world. It could be terror, natural disasters; it could be accidents or a mixture of them,” he says.

The eVigilo broadcast system is the only cell broadcast system worldwide that warns millions of people in less than 20 seconds in case of earthquakes, tsunamis and other imminent threats sensed by people, satellite imagery, seismograph readings or other types of sensors that communicate with the system.

Shalev says eVigilo can send more than five million alerts in under five seconds.

“The system is very accurate, even within 50 meters of where someone is located. We alert only the people who need to be alerted, not those outside the affected area,” Shalev says. The system is bi-directional, meaning people can text back to ask for help or let others know they’re safe.

eVigilo’s technology also collects its own data to calculate the anticipated levels of destruction and sends out immediate geo-targeted alerts to international emergency response teams.

Both Israel and Chile rely on eVigilo for their national alert systems.

“We’re the only company in the world that I know of with two projects with two governments. We are field proven in both countries,” says Shalev.

During Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, eVigilo alerted Israeli citizens to take cover from rocket fire from Gaza. “Our system worked for 52 days continuously without any fault,” says Shalev.

Israel’s Homefront Command chose the eVigilo Internet system to power its iOref app, which uses push message technology to find users in emergencies. The app also delivers alerts.

eViglio recently applied for a tender in New Zealand, another country susceptible to earthquakes. And its management is in talks with officials in five Latin American countries and two European countries, which Shalev says he cannot name. eViglio is part of a consortium working together on Smart Cities in Europe.

Europe is shuffling towards an international agreement on emergency alerts delivered to our mobile phones, but if current plans continue you might not ever know you received one.

The idea is being discussed today at the European Emergency Number Association (EENA) with various industry and government reps in attendance, but once they agree they’ll likely be mandating an alert mechanism which won’t audibly alert half the population, and could leave iPhone users to the mercy of the encroaching zombie horde as their handsets don’t seem to get the message at all.

iOS 6 has some support for the Cell Broadcast mechanism the EU wants to make available to national emergency services, though it’s better at responding to the US WEA system messages which alerted residents of the impending arrival of Hurricane Sandy earlier this month. The US system only went live in May and only works on the more-recent handsets, but is already proving valuable.

Cell Broadcast should be a better mechanism – it’s part of the GSM standard though not implemented by every operator and not supported by every handset. The idea is that a GSM (or 3G) base station can send out a message to every handset attached to it, with the handsets deciding if they want to receive or ignore the message based on user preferences, but few handsets sound an audible alert even when a message is received, and support for the standard is far from universal.

Cell Broadcast was once envisioned as a mechanism for delivering cricket scores and other time-critical information which customers might be convinced to pay for, but these days it’s hardly used at all, as Vodafone explained to one customer who’d stumbled across the Cell Broadcast settings on a smartphone:

“The option of cell broadcasting is mainly used by network teams when investigating issues and will sometimes be used by emergency services” it said – though hopefully not in an emergency, given the lack of reach.

That’s not stopped the Netherlands adopting an emergency alert system based on Cell Broadcast, following trials in 2007 which showed messages reaching around 90 per cent of handsets (and in part motivated by the proliferation of “citizen journalism” which spreads scares and rumour faster than the government can address them, unless the government has access to such a mechanism).

The geographic nature of Cell Broadcast, and the fact that it is not susceptible to overloading, make it an attractive and elegant solution. But some, such as Intersec’s Gary Buchwald, argue that SMS can be equally robust, guarantees delivery and sounds an audible alert on every handset.

Intersec makes servers which add geographic targeting to SMS delivery, integrating with the operator’s Home Location Register (HLR), which knows the location of every customer all the time. With that data the company can deliver an SMS message to everyone within a specific region, without having to rely on partially supported standards. Cell Broadcast messages are less discerning, so will (for example) arrive on a handset of someone roaming in the area, but neither can it be adjusted to match the language of the recipient.

There’s also a question as to whether the SMS infrastructure could support such loading, though Intersec is adamant it could. China Mobile recently boasted it could deliver 25 million text messages, enough to cover the population of Beijing, in less than 10 seconds, which would seem to make Cell Broadcast entirely redundant.

Which is why the Americans have come up with something entirely new for their Wireless Emergency Alerts. Handset support for that system might be lacking now, but US replacement cycles mean messages reaching just about everyone by the end of 2014, and every handset comes with an interface allowing the user to ignore Amber Alerts (missing children) and Imminent Threat Alerts (most likely weather, but could be other disasters) though there’s no option to ignore Presidential Alerts should Obama decide to say “hi” to the whole country.

The EU will, most likely, go with Cell Broadcast and try to bully the handset manufacturers into better supporting the standard, though Buchwald reckons they’ll have to switch to SMS eventually. That’s unless they decide to embrace the US alternative, though EU citizens might not be keen to see their presidential decrees being unstoppable.